forgive me if i stay
by altschmerz
Summary: (for the movie 'jack reacher: never go back') When Jack Reacher leaves Sam Dayton at her new school, she doesn't really expect to see him again. She definitely doesn't expect to see Susan Turner again. Until winter break rolls around and there's Susan, picking her up and taking her back to a well lit house where Jack is making dinner in the kitchen. Gen. Found family.


or: my post-movie fic where jack and susan aren't dating or having sex but they are sleeping together, and sam gets a family.

* * *

They say the ship in port

Is the safer one

But that's not the reason it was made

So forgive me if I wander off

But forgive me more if I just stay

\- "A Ship In Port", Radical Face

* * *

Winter break approaches, and Sam doesn't ask any questions. She figures the decision has been made for her already, that whether she's staying at school or going to the home of some benevolent - or not so benevolent - strangers, there's no use worrying about it before it happens. The break doesn't sound like much fun but it'll be fine. It always is.

Break arrives, and Sam stands on the curb with her suitcase, waiting for her social worker. Susan Turner is who shows up, and Sam can't help but stare openly as the woman pops the trunk, hefting the suitcase into it.

"Well?" asks Susan, standing on the curb with her hands on her hips, cheeks reddened by the cold, snowflakes drifting around her face and clinging to her eyelashes. "Are you going to come say hello?"

Almost numb, Sam walks slowly over to her, snaking her arms around Susan's waist and holding on tight, cheek pressed to her shoulder. More so even than Jack, Sam had never expected to see Susan again. It had surprised her, how much that hurt.

"Hi Susan," Sam mutters quietly. She feels Susan give a short huff of laughter against her ribcage.

"Hi, Sam," Susan says in a voice of amused affection, hugging the girl back, rubbing a hand over her shoulder blades.

When she pulls back and follows Susan into the car, Sam actually asks one of the questions that's been buzzing in her mind since she saw the Major pull up to the sidewalk.

"Why are you here?" she asks, pulling at a thread on her skirt like the answer doesn't matter.

"Well we've got you for the next two and a half weeks, and somebody had to come get you." Seeing the look on Sam's face out of the corner of her eye, Susan answers her second question, the one she hadn't asked. "Jack's at my place. Somebody had to keep an eye on dinner while somebody went to get you. Decided on a coin flip."

"You lost?" Sam guesses, smirking.

"I won," Susan corrects, smiling wider at the girl's mixed expression. "It's a bit of a drive, why don't you tell me how your classes are going?"

A thousand more questions circle around Sam's mind. Why? What's your investment here? Why is Jack at your house? Why am I going to your house? Who decided this? Why? Why?

She doesn't ask any of them, opting not to look a gift horse in the mouth, lest the gift it offers disappear.

The house Susan pulls up in front of is small, plain, and looks to Sam like something out of a fairy tale. She gets out of the car slowly, boots crunching through the top layer of stiff frost, snowflakes melting on her cheeks and neck.

"Not much to look at, I know," Susan comments from behind her somewhere, retrieving the suitcase from the trunk.

"Are you kidding me, it's great," replies Sam, pushing herself into movement and following Susan into the house.

Jack steps out of the kitchen holding a wooden spoon, and Sam's face splits into a wide grin. She throws her arms around his neck, exclaiming 'Reacher!'. He staggers sideways a little, turning the falter into a spin, lifting her a little off the ground and returning the embrace fiercely.

He asks her about her classes like Susan had, and she tells him about them, sitting on the counter, swinging her dangling legs carelessly, while they finish cooking. She expects Susan to leave, go work on something else while Sam recounts petty dramas and teaspoon successes she's already heard. She stays, though, interjecting comments here and there while she and Jack cook together.

It's fascinating to watch, Susan and Jack cooking together. They move around each other easily, whisks and carrots and plates and measuring cups passing from hand to hand between them. It's disgustingly domestic, and it's the most bizarre thing Sam has ever seen.

"Are you sure you're not dating him?" Sam asks Susan again in a stage whisper, once they've dispatched Jack to set the table. "Like, really sure?"

"Really sure," Susan answers after a moment.

It was a weird question to try and give an answer to, given a lot of people would probably disagree with the one she just gave. They talk, a lot and about a lot of things. He's been staying with her for a couple of days, and Susan only has one guest room, so it was left that either Jack stayed on the couch or with her. An awkward moment of mutually eyeing each other and a brief conversation establishing no funny business later, they decide that he'll just stay with her. There's no reason not to, after all.

It's nice, Susan thinks, sleeping with someone and doing nothing but precisely that. Jack is a solid presence beside her, and they don't begin with that intention, but more often than not, they wake with Susan's cheek jammed into Jack's shoulder, shins tangled with his, or Jack's forehead pressed against Susan's back, arm flung over her waist.

Sam shrugs. "Okay," she says, then goes to pull a soda out of the fridge.

They talk about light things through dinner, Sam's new friends, the odder odd jobs Jack's been doing, Leach's promotion. There are a lot of questions Sam wants to ask but doesn't, about how Jack can stand to live the way he does, how Susan went back to work every day at a place where she'd been so soundly betrayed. She wants to ask what she's even doing here with them, when she's not actually Jack's daughter, or Susan's anything, so what's the logic here?

"So I don't know what holidays you grew up celebrating," Susan says after dinner, "but I celebrate Hanukkah. We can get a tree if you want, or-"

"Hanukkah's cool," Sam says quickly. "I like candles."

The smile Susan gives her is a little amused, and Sam blushes. Susan lets her light the first candle the next week, and the reflection of the flame in the frosted living room window, in the eyes of Susan and Jack, it feels like magic.

As the end of break approaches, Sam feels like she's living in the Twilight Zone, listening to Susan and Jack discuss art museums they can visit over Spring Break, and the point at which Jack starts talking about getting a temporary self defense training position over the summer so he can stick around is the point at which Sam decides enough is enough and the jig is up.

"Okay, what's going on," she says, breaking into the middle of Susan talking about an instructor at Quantico looking for a new hire.

"I told you we should have an actual conversation about this," Susan tells Jack, shooting him a withering look. Her face softens greatly when she turns to Sam and says, "As long as you want it, Sam, that room down the hall is yours. I may not be the parenting type, neither me or Jack know what we're doing here, but nobody should have to go through life without people." Susan stops for a second, looking from Sam to Jack and back again. "Jack and I have decided we want to be your people, if you'll have us."

Silence hangs over the room. In the window, eight candles burn in the menorah. Sam swallows hard.

"I'd like to see the botany museum," she says quietly, and both Susan and Jack break into relieved grins. Sam still has questions, doubts and worries, fears, but she doesn't ask or voice them. Not yet. After all, she's got plenty of time.


End file.
